Friday, February 04, 2011

It was on this day in 2004 that new media whiz-kid Mark Zuckerberg rolled out Facebook, the immensely popular social networking site which was originally intended to keep students and faculty of Harvard connected. As membership was opened up, more and more people signed on, and today more than 500 million users over the age of 13* use the site to meet, socialize, stay in touch, over-share, and occasionally perpetuate the injudicious cruelties of high school against each other every single day.

All of which has not been without controversy... There are those who refuse to use it because of the site's business practices, which I try not to think about since doing so could potentially make my eyes roll to such an extent that I might self-induce a stroke. These are the same people who put gas in their car, pay their cable bill, and eat fast food with nary a thought. Still others have banned the site in their work places due to concerns over productivity, rather than banning, say, middle managers from having access to PowerPoint. It has also been intermittently banned by those harbingers of freedom Syria and Iran, so if you're forbidden from Facebooking at work, you are entirely within your rights to liken your employers to Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

All I can say is, I can't even remember how I used to procrastinate before Facebook... Even the regular Internet - you remember, the one with all the porn on it - was never as distracting as this!

*The Pop Culture Institute can in no way endorse these numbers as, from personal experience, we know of people with multiple profiles as well as users under the age of 13, but in the interest of kissing ass is happy to parrot the numbers Facebook has provided. *share on: facebook

It takes over for a few months, but then you settle into a nice routine with it - check it in the morning, check it at night... But at first, yeah, it takes over and it's all you do. Until you learn the etiquette.

My Personality Type

What Kind Of Liberal Am I?

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.